Ubuntu Gaining Corporate Credibility, Canonical Survey Finds

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Ubuntu Gaining Corporate Credibility, Canonical Survey Finds

Approximately 7,000 corporate users polled say they use the server-based version of open source operating system Ubuntu in apps involving the Web, databases, and e-mail.

By Ed Scannell, InformationWeek
Feb. 5, 2009

Ubuntu appears to be gaining greater acceptance among both smaller and larger businesses as a growing number of IT shops are deploying the open source operating system as part of mission-critical applications.

In a joint survey conducted by Canonical, caretakers of Ubuntu, and market researcher RedMonk, approximately 7,000 respondents said they were using the server-based version of the operating system in many mission-critical applications involving the Web, databases, and mail.

Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst with RedMonk, said he wasn't particularly surprised that Ubuntu was gaining credibility among business users. What was unexpected was the wide range of workloads it has become an integral part of.

Ubuntu "is far from being relegated to a niche role. The distribution is now being leveraged for a variety of enterprise tasks going all the way from the mundane to the critical," O'Grady said.

What has made the server-based version of Ubuntu more appealing to a wider range of business users, according to O'Grady and Ubuntu officials, is a broader mix of standard open source components and more widely popular components than its archrivals Red Hat and Novell. The fact Canonical has focused on making the installation of these components easier hasn't hurt either.

"I think we have pulled together some of the best components that are available out there and have worked on making them easier to install. Our goal is to have business embrace the best of open source at the core of their businesses while also having their choice of proprietary applications that can run on top of it," said Steve George, Canonical's director of corporate services.

While Red Hat and Novell remain the market-share leaders among server-based open source distributors, O'Grady believes Ubuntu is beginning to establish significant mindshare among users. He said the company will look to further strengthen its server-based offering sometime this spring, when it's expected to deliver an updated version, code-named Jaunty Jackalope, which will feature support for virtualization technologies.

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